Abstract

[About the book]:

'Commonsense' suggests that one should 'look before you leap'. When people do not, they cannot be quite sure where they will land.

The educational reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s would have benefited from such precautions. As it was, education policy moved forward with a bold, but almost blind, decisiveness throughout the education system. Any problems which arose were also likely to affect the 25,000 schools of England and Wales and the experiences of all of their seven million school-age children.

The papers in this book arise from the work of a task group of fourteen researchers which met in 1992/3 to review the practicalities and consequences of attempting to implement the National Curriculum in primary schools. The authors are all experts in their fields and this collection is the most comprehensive and up-to-date review of research evidence currently available on primary education.

The task group set out to go 'back to basics' interpreted as clarifying the findings and issues suggested by educational research which might contribute to future deliberations of the Government and other groups engaged in policy formation for the primary school curriculum.